The present invention relates to a vehicle hood having an outer panel and an inner panel.
A vehicle hood having an outer panel and an inner panel has been known. Such a vehicle hood requires improvement in pedestrian protection performance. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2011-11658 (JP-A-2011-11658) discloses that a reinforcement component is provided between the outer panel and the inner panel to improve pedestrian protection performance. A cross section of the reinforcement component has a substantially hat shape. Specifically, the reinforcement component includes a pair of flange parts to be connected to the bottom of the inner panel, a pair of shock absorbing vertical walls rising from the respective flange parts toward the outer panel, and a top that connects between the ends (upper ends) on a side, which is close to the outer panel, of the shock absorbing vertical walls. The top is opposed to the outer panel at a position upwardly away from the bottom of the inner panel.
In such a vehicle hood, when a head collides with the outer panel, the shock absorbing vertical wall of the reinforcement component particularly absorbs the shock during the collision of the head while deforming with the outer panel. This increases an acceleration primary peak (energy absorption amount) in an initial stage of collision, and decreases an acceleration secondary peak in the latter half of the collision. This decreases a so-called head injury criterion (HIC) score, leading to improvement in pedestrian protection performance.